My recent purchase of Realm of Magic and the YouTube series Founding Hogwarts by The Carlin Brothers inspired me to create this fun modded rags to riches challenge that I’ll be posting here as well as on my Simblr, Potterhead Plumbob.

The premise

The rags to riches challenge is nothing new. I’ve seen it done countless times by simmers on YouTube and in the Sim Forums. You start with no funds and essentially try to get rich, with some other rules to make the gameplay a little more exciting.

I created the four founders in CAS and will be using them for my own brand of the rags to riches challenge.



Godric Gryffindor has the aspiration Spellcraft & Sorcery. He is family-oriented, loves the outdoors and is self-assured.

Rowena Ravenclaw has the aspiration Renaissance Sim. She is creative, a bookworm, and a sob.

Helga Hufflepuff has the aspiration of Freelance Botanist. She is cheerful, loves the outdoors and is good.

Salazar Slytherin has the aspiration of Mansion Baron. He is ambitious, a perfectionist, and materialistic.

The rules

Purchase an empty 64x64 lot and set your money to zero using the money cheat. (money 0). I started the challenge using the lot in Brindleton Bay, but ultimately changed to Windenburg since the town looked a lot more like the Scottish Highlands, and fit the theme a lot better.

No careers allowed. This means your sims cannot get a job and earn money. The premise of the challenge is to earn money through herbology, potion brewing, item collecting, sending familiars foraging, painting, and writing books. I downloaded a Crystal Ball Computer mod so that I can have my founders write books without the use of a computer, furthering the immersion.

The copypasto spell is only allowed once per day.

You can even have students. Once you’re ready to accept students into your school, you can use the Foster Family mod by LittleMsSam. The mod will create a new single-sim household with a randomly generated child that will then “live” with the family. You also earn 500$ for Kids/Teens and 750$ for Toddlers (although I won’t be using the latter), so it’s a way to make a bit of money as well.

Optional: Children (both household children and students) can only be aged up into teens when they've maxed out all of their skills. Teens must become Adept spellcasters before they can be aged into young adults.

I’m playing with aging off at the moment, but you’re welcomed to play as a legacy challenge, where the founders’ offspring continue to run the school.

There are a few mods that I find crucial to the game for aesthetic purposes. The Pufferhead stuff pack by MLys is gold. I’ve also collected various other historical and/or Harry Potter-themed items by searching through Tumblr blogs and Mod The Sims, so feel free to do that as well.

I’ve tweaked my game configurations using MCCC:

Aging is off.

Every season is 28 days.

Households may have up to 20 sims.

Skills take twice as long to level up.

Risky Woohoo is at 1%

Each trimester of pregnancy lasts 9 days instead of 3, making a sim’s pregnancy 27 days long.

The chance of townie sims getting pregnant is extremely low.